Users care a lot less about looks than designers and PMs (seem to) wish they did.
They like consistent, reliable, fast operation. Especially those first two things.
The things that make them most unhappy are: 1) programs that behave unpredictably—a predictable, consistent bug that happens every single time is preferable to an operation that fails 5% of the time, randomly, or a button that fails to register about half of all clicks, or anything like that and 2) changes to an interface they've already learned—because your new thing probably isn't 1/10 as "intuitive" as you think it is, so it's just another annoying arbitrary thing they have to deal with for no good reason, when they already had the last annoying, arbitrary thing figured out.
Now, where it might make a difference (maybe—but I'm skeptical) is screenshots on sales pages. Which I suppose is why design continues to be so anti-user.
They like consistent, reliable, fast operation. Especially those first two things.
The things that make them most unhappy are: 1) programs that behave unpredictably—a predictable, consistent bug that happens every single time is preferable to an operation that fails 5% of the time, randomly, or a button that fails to register about half of all clicks, or anything like that and 2) changes to an interface they've already learned—because your new thing probably isn't 1/10 as "intuitive" as you think it is, so it's just another annoying arbitrary thing they have to deal with for no good reason, when they already had the last annoying, arbitrary thing figured out.
Now, where it might make a difference (maybe—but I'm skeptical) is screenshots on sales pages. Which I suppose is why design continues to be so anti-user.